


Final Chance

by Miko no da (Miko)



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-01-01
Updated: 2000-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko%20no%20da
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weiss faces what may be their most difficult mission ever. </p><p>(Posting OLD fics off my defunct website)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as soon as I saw the note. There wasn't anything in particular about it to make me nervous - just a plain white envelope, stuck in the slots of my locker, with my name on the front in bold, cursive writing. It wasn't the first time I'd gotten a note like this, and it probably wouldn't be the last - ever since the girls at the high school I'm assistant coach for found out that I used to play in J-League, I've gotten one or two anonymous love letters in my locker every month.

The teasing started the moment the other two assistant coaches saw the little envelope, as always. Ignoring their playful banter - they were good guys, really, and gave no evidence of jealousy over the treatment I sometimes got as a 'former star athlete' - I plucked the piece of stationary from the grills and pulled the letter from inside, scanning it quickly. It was short and to the point, and it made my blood run cold.

Siberian. Report to the Koneko, ASAP.

That was it. Six little words, and they had the power to make me shake in my shoes. It wasn't signed, but it didn't need to be - and I recognized Manx's handwriting from the few times I'd seen it anyway.

Something must have shown on my face, because the ribbing from the guys fell off. Hesitantly Daisuke spoke up. "Oi, Ken-kun, is something wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost."

I shook my head and crumpled the note in my fist, carefully blanking my expression. "No. Just a note from an old acquaintance. Sorry guys, I'm gonna have to skip bar night tonight." It was tradition for the three of us to grab a beer or two at a local bar after practice sessions, but one way or another, this little invitation had changed that. Grabbing my jacket and helmet, I left the locker room without another word.

 

* * *

I seriously considered not going. After all, Weiss had been over for more than two years, and I hadn't heard a peep from Kritiker or the others in all that time. Not that I can blame them - I was no more eager to maintain ties to that bloody period of my life than I'm sure they were. Though I had kind of expected Omi to keep in touch, at least. Well, maybe he'd found something better to do with his life. I sure hoped so - the kid was the most innocent of us all, even after what he'd been through, and he deserved a break for a change.

Still, having received the summons, I knew I couldn't just ignore it, no matter how much I wanted to. Despite the fact that it might very well mean that the simple, pleasant life I'd built for myself would come crashing down around my ears, I had to know what was so important that Manx would try to drag us back into it. I assumed the others had been contacted, since my codename had been used. I was also curious to see who else would actually show up.

'Curiosity killed the cat,' as they say - of course, most people don't know the second line of that little truism. 'Satisfaction brought it back'. Omi taught me that one. It had suited us both, at the time, and I imagined it still would. Truth be told, I was kind of looking forward to seeing him.

I parked my bike in the little shed at the back of the Koneko no Sumu, feelings of déjà vu washing over me like waves over a beach. Nothing had changed - the little flower shop was still doing brisk business, though the crowds of fangirls had lessened since we were no longer there to drool over. Momoe-san was still nodding over her rocker, petting Tama the neko. I waved to her in greeting, and she opened her eyes wide to see me.

"Ah, Ken-san!" she smiled in return to my wave. "It's good to see you again. You look well. How are you doing?"

"I'm pretty well," I answered, stopping long enough to chat a little. I admit it, I'd missed the old lady. Despite her outward appearance she was sharp as a tack, and had a dry wit that most people never got to see. She'd always taken good care of us, bringing us chicken soup and the like when we were sick, and doing an excellent job of covering for our rather erratic appearances in the flower shop. She was in on the whole thing, of course - she'd been a Kritiker agent long before any of us were born. This shop, tending her beloved flowers and enjoying relaxation with her cats, was her retirement. We had been her way of keeping her fingers in the pot. I absently wondered what she was doing for stimulation now that Weiss had folded.

"I'm the assistant coach at St. Agnus' high school," I added, and her smile widened. "Looking to make head coach within the next five years or so. Not bad for someone who was once accused of gambling on his own games, ne?"

"That's wonderful, Ken-san. I wish you the best of luck." She gestured vaguely towards the back of the shop. "The others are waiting for you."

Just that quickly, the tension was back again. I nodded thanks, and moved past her into the main part of the shop. Some pimply kid was watering the flower arrangements. He couldn't be more than 15, and a quick once-over dismissed the possibility that he was using the job as the same sort of cover we had. On his worst day, Omi'd had twice the muscle this kid ever would. More than that, he didn't move with the grace of a fighter. Granted, both Omi and I had had our clumsy moments, but not to the extent of this kid!

He blinked at me, a little bewildered, through coke-bottle glasses. "Oh. You must be with the others. Momoe-baa-san said to let you through to the back." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and for a weird moment the gesture reminded me of Crawford. I shook my head with a snort, dismissing the image, and moved past him.

The winding metal steps down into the briefing room were the same as ever, and the déjà vu flooded over me again. As the room came into sight, I could make out two sets of fiery red hair - Manx and Aya - and Youji's lanky frame sprawled out over one of the couches.

As my foot left the last step, my eyes swept over the room with a practiced ease, noting what was different and what was the same. The furniture was all still there, but it was covered with sheets and dusty with disuse. The TV/VCR set we'd gotten our mission briefings from was missing, as was Omi's beloved computer system from the corner. The whole room had an air of disuse hanging over it.

There were changes in my teammates, too. Aya was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed as always, but there was a smile of greeting on his face, directed at me. I blinked and blushed a little, startled to see such a welcoming expression from him. I'd had the worst crush on him back then, and spent much of our two years in Weiss chasing him around like a love-sick puppy dog. I was grateful to see both that he had forgiven me, and that my own hormones were staying quiet. Apparently I was over him. He must have seen the relief in my face and guessed at the meaning, because the smile widened another notch.

Youji's hair was cut neatly short, and though he was sprawling, there was less of a sense of indolent leisure and more of watchful waiting in the pose. The ever-present shades were missing as well, and wide green eyes sparkled at me. "Yo, Ken-ken!" He greeted me using the familiar nickname. "Long time no see."

"Yo-tan," I replied in return. "What's with the hair cut? You look almost respectable or something!"

He snorted delicately, and waved a long-fingered hand at Manx. "They don't let you have 'individualist hairstyles' on the force until you reach detective, at least. I'm being a good little rookie until I get my promotion."

I had to gape at him. "You're a COP?" I blurted, then was embarrassed at my bluntness. Well, obviously I hadn't changed much, either.

Aya laughed - he actually LAUGHED - from his post at the wall. "That's nothing," he said in that soft voice of his. "Wait until he tells you about his fiancee."

My jaw dropped a little further. "Fiancee?" I repeated, feeling like a parrot. "You're ENGAGED? YOU? The ultimate playboy?"

Youji snickered. "Yeah, well, she's worth it. You're invited to the wedding, by the way - I've been trying to get a hold of you, but none of your old email addresses or phone numbers work."

I smacked myself on the head. "Gomen! Someone leaked to the press that I was still alive about a year ago, and I was bombarded by letters from all my old fans from my J-League days. I had to change all my contact info to get them - and the damn press - off my back. I never thought to tell you guys!"

"We are all responsible for losing touch," Aya shrugged in that graceful way he had. "You no more than we. When I took my name back and resumed my life as Ran, I changed a good deal of my contact information as well, and didn't bother to inform anyone."

"Ah..." I blinked at him. "Right. I guess you couldn't very well keep calling yourself 'Aya', with Aya-chan awake and around, huh? I'll have to remember to call you Ran."

He shrugged again. "Don't worry about it. I still find myself answering when someone calls Aya's name. Though I would prefer it if you used my proper name."

Manx cleared her throat, bringing our attention to her. During our little catch-up session, she'd been perched quietly on the arm of the chair, a large manila folder in her hand, waiting for us to finish. "If you boys are done for the moment, I'm sure you're wondering why I've asked you all to come here. I assure you, it wasn't just for a reunion."

"Aren't we waiting for Omi?" I blurted, then remembered Momoe-san telling me that the others were all waiting for me. She'd implied that I was the last one to arrive - but Omi was nowhere to be seen. A chill ran through me, and from the uneasy expressions on Ran and Youji's faces, I could see they were as surprised as I was.

Manx shook her head, her expression inscrutable as always. "Bombay will not be joining us," was all she said. She drew several papers from the envelope, and passed them around. I glanced down at mine, saw that it was full of the usual pertinent info on the target - known hideouts, typical movements, places we were likely to find them - and returned my attention to her, knowing from experience that she would give us the basics of the mission aloud.

Youji apparently was not as blasé as I was about the whole thing. "Manx," he said slowly, shaking his head. "You can't seriously be expecting us to take a hit, can you? After all this time - we're not a team any more, we don't think like one. I'm a cop, I'm hardly the appropriate person to call on for an assassination. Ran's in the middle of college, and Ken is... a... what are you doing now anyway, Ken-ken?"

"Assistant athletics coach for a high school," I supplied. He blinked, gave me a thumbs up, and then continued.

"We're not killers any more, Manx. And why give this to us, anyway? We've been out of the loop for more than two years. Surely Kritiker has other groups like Weiss, to do this sort of thing now?"

"And why are you involved?" Ran suddenly threw in. "After we assassinated Takatori, you turned things over to Birman and said that we were going to be dealing with her - that you were Persia's assistant, and with him dead, you weren't going to be heading missions any more. Why the sudden change?"

Manx sighed, and in that moment she looked older than I'd ever seen her look before. Gesturing to the data sheets, she replied, "This mission could have been handled by one of the active groups, true, but I pulled some strings to get you three assigned to it. The target is known to all three of you. As for why I'm involved... I pulled strings for that as well." She hesitated, then pulled a glossy black and white photo from the envelope, and held it out for us to see.

"The target... is Omi."


	2. Chapter 2

"The target... is Omi."

There were several seconds of stunned silence in the room, as we each digested that in our own ways. All three of us were staring at the picture in total disbelief; certain that we'd heard her wrong.

The man in the picture was undeniably Omi, though it was fuzzy as if it had been taken through a telescoping lens from a far distance. Which, I realized belatedly, it probably had been. He'd changed - most of the baby fat had melted away, and while his face was still heart-shaped, it was lean and his fine bone structure was showing through. The smile lines around his mouth and eyes had faded and been replaced by lines of tension and worry. The sweet smile that had almost always graced his lips was missing, turned to a tight frown. It made him look much older than the nineteen years I knew him to be, where before he'd often been teased because he looked so young.

The picture showed his head and the top of his chest, and I could just make out what looked like the butt of a high-powered rifle resting against his right shoulder. His head was bent as though he were looking through a scope, one tooth showing as he bit his lip in a familiar gesture of concentration.

"Masaka!" Youji blurted out, swinging upright on the couch and leaning forward to get a better look at the picture. "Manx, you can't be serious! OMI? What on earth could OMI have done in the last two years to put him on Kritiker's hit list? You guys all but raised the kid! He worships the ground you walk on!"

Manx's face was set, her expression giving nothing of her feelings away, but I had the feeling the Youji's words had cut her deeply. "A little over a year ago, a new assassin going by the codename 'Black Cat' appeared on the underworld scene. His fees were ridiculously high, though the fact that he reportedly had never missed a hit argued for him being worth the price. Contacting him was no guarantee of retaining his services, however - he frequently turned down large amounts of money for no apparent reason.

"However, Kritiker tracked both his kills and his contracts, and there were far more of the former than the latter - indicating that he was either killing for pleasure in some cases, or that he was ultimately working for a higher power we couldn't trace, and taking jobs on the side." She paused, glanced around to make sure we were all paying attention. She needn't have bothered - we were all hanging rapt on her every word.

"Kritiker decided to investigate further when two of our own top agents were targeted by Black Cat. It's taken us nearly six month to catch him, but this," she gestured at the photo, "was finally taken by one of our operatives at the scene of an assassination last week. The rifle you can see him holding matches the ballistics analyses of the bullets retrieved from previous assassinations by him."

"Are we talking about the same Omi here?" I asked, my eyes wide with disbelief. "The kid who wouldn't voluntarily hurt a fly if it hadn't hurt someone else first? The same Omi who used to have monthly crises of conscience over all the people we'd killed?"

"Have you checked the backgrounds of his targets?" Ran wanted to know. "Is it possible that the people - even the Kritiker agents - that he's killing are corrupt?"

Manx shook her head slowly. "That's the worst part. Most of the targets have been underworld bosses and the like, yes. But about one in five is an innocent as far as Kritiker has been able to determine. The Kritiker agents he's killed - now numbering eight - have been some of our top agents. No suspicions on any of them. The latest three were YOUR replacements, and that's one of the reasons you've been called in. We have no one currently trained to handle someone of his expertise." She drew a deep breath.

"The kills of innocents, as far as we have been able to determine, are the ones that he does NOT have a known contract for. It is the expert opinion of Kritiker's psychologists that at some point after leaving Weiss, Omi reacted to the trauma of his experiences in an unpredicted fashion, and began this bizarre killing spree."

"You mean he snapped from the pressure," Youji summed up bitterly. "But why AFTER it was all over? Last I'd heard from him, he was in his last year of high school and doing well."

"Sometimes people don't react to stresses until they are long past," Ran murmured, his eyes shadowed. "Omi had a great many things that he hadn't truly faced - being Takatori's son was only one of them. His memories were still returning as well - possibly something in them caused this erratic change."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You guys aren't serious, are you? Omi? Sweet, innocent little Omi? The one of us that nothing ever touched, no matter how bad? Come ON! Guys, there has GOT to be another explanation for this!"

Ran glanced over at me, and I could see that he wasn't any happier with the idea than I was. "You just said it yourself, Ken. Nothing ever touched him, ever got to him. How much do you think that cost him? To remain constantly cheerful and supportive of us?"

I flushed shamefully, aware of the truth of his words. Omi had shoved everything deep down inside and ignored it, so that he could be there when we needed him to be. I could remember the one time I'd found him collapsed on his bed, sobbing his heart out, just after Ouka had died. He'd choked down his tears and assured me that he was okay, and not to worry about him. Then he'd distracted me with something from the mission we'd been working on, and I'd forgotten all about it. Thinking about it now, I wondered how often he'd cried himself to sleep, when he'd been alone. "Shit," was all I could manage to say.

"If possible," Manx's voice broke, and she had to clear her throat before she could go on. "If possible, we'd like him brought in alive. Kritiker is very much responsible for him, and we do take care of our own. There is some hope that he can be rehabilitated."

I winced to hear that word applied to Omi - rehabilitation was something Kritiker did for the junkies and street rats that we had rescued. Not for a sweet kid like Omi.

"I'm in," Youji said, standing abruptly. "No one knows Omi like we do. We'll find him, talk him down, and bring him back in one piece. Right, guys?" He glanced at Ran and I for confirmation of our support. I nodded hastily, and was relieved to see Ran echoing the gesture.

I could see some of the tension drain from Manx's figure, and she unbent enough to smile at us gratefully. "Thank you, boys. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Omi means every bit as much to me as he does to you. I'm counting on you in this. You have full access to any resources of Kritiker's that you might need."

She turned to leave, and paused on the first step, looking back at us over her shoulder. "White hunters in the darkness, hunt the..." she began the familiar ending spiel, but her voice broke and she shook her head. "Bring him back," she finished instead. "He doesn't deserve to go out like this. Not after everything he's done for us." Having said her piece, she continued up the stairs, leaving the three of us staring at one another in silence, wondering how exactly we were going to go about hunting one of our own.

 

* * *

The information Kritiker had supplied hadn't turned out to be particularly useful. Omi was too much of a professional, crazy or not, to leave an obvious trail. He never met his clients personally, and used a slightly different method of assassination every time. Oddly enough, there was no sign of him using his normal weapons of crossbow, longbow, or darts. Nothing predictable, no pattern that could be extrapolated and used against him. No indication of what he did or where he spent his time between hits.

We worked frantically, a sort of unspoken deadline hanging over us. We had to get to him as quickly as possible, before he killed anybody else. The more people he killed, the less likely that we'd be able to call him back to his old self - or worse yet, the more hateful of himself he would be if we DID manage to bring him back to normal. Of course at this point it another kill was really only one more drop in the bucket, but it hung over our heads anyway.

Finally, we decided to set up a sting. None of us could pose as the client, for obvious reasons, but we could and did get another agent from Kritiker to set it up. 'Black Cat' was notoriously hard to get a hold of, and it took us the better part of two weeks to contact him and indicate that we had an offer for him. The standard method, Manx had informed us, was to run a particular ad in a local newspaper. We placed the ad, and sat back and waited.

Wanted: one black cat, male. Needed to deal with rodent problem. Reward offered. A phone number followed, so he could get in touch with us.

To our surprise, it wasn't a phone call that we received, but rather a small parcel, sent by courier, which contained a cellular phone. The three of us and the agent - Nishikawa, his name was - sat staring at it in bewilderment for several long moments. The return address on the package had been simply 'Kuroi Neko' - Black Cat.

"He must have traced the number through the phone company," Youji finally offered. "Pulled the address out of their records. I suppose it's a good way of determining if the offer is legit, or if it's coming from a cop."

"Is there any way he could have connected you to Kritiker?" Ran demanded of Nishikawa. I felt sweat break out on my brow - if he'd clued in that it was a setup, we'd have to start all over again, and he would be doubly cautious of offers in the immediate future.

The portly Kritiker agent shook his head. "No. The house and phone are listed under my wife's maiden name, for that very reason. She's an elementary school teacher, no connections to the agency."

I think I jumped the highest when the phone suddenly rang, though I know I wasn't the only one. Sheepishly, Nishikawa and I glanced at one another, before Ran gestured for him to answer it.

"Hai?" He spoke hesitantly into the mouthpiece. The rest of us waited with our breath held, lest we give away our presence and frighten the quarry.

"I understand you have a rodent problem," the voice came back, distorted not only by the tiny speaker in the cell phone, but by electronic means as well. I would never have known it was Omi. Of course, he had been the one of us most inclined to electronic espionage and counter measures. "I may be able to help you with that. However, my fees are very expensive." He quoted a price that nearly made me whistle, until I remembered that I was supposed to be keeping quiet. Manx hadn't been kidding about the exorbitant fees!

"I can afford it," Nishikawa replied, his voice steady. He hadn't even blinked at the price - apparently he'd already been briefed on what to expect. "How do I send you the details?"

"In the battery compartment of the phone is a small key," the distorted voice replied. "It opens a lockbox in the Tokyo Central Bank. Leave the details there. Keep this phone with you at all times. If I decide to take the job, I'll contact you. If I don't get an answer on this line, the deal is off. Do you understand?"

"Hai. I understand. I'll have the details in the box by tomorrow." Nishikawa replied. There was an audible click, then silence as the line was disconnected. The Kritiker agent set the phone down on the table slowly, and stared at it as though afraid it would jump up and bite him.

Youji gave the low whistle I'd held back earlier. "Boy, oh boy. He's not playing around, is he? I'll give you ten to one he's tapped into the bank's security cameras, and he'll be watching for the drop. If he sees anything suspicious, he'll bail on it, guaranteed."

"Then we'll just have to make certain he does not see anything suspicious," Ran answered. He already had the back off the phone and was fishing about the insides. "Here it is." He withdrew the little key, dangling it from a short chain. The numbers '307' were incised on the metal, indicating WHICH lockbox it would open. Nishikawa took it.

"Aren't cell phones really easy to trace?" I asked, puzzled. Most professionals avoided dealing over cellular phones for that very reason, in my experience. Nishikawa shrugged.

"There wasn't a single thing in that conversation that could implicate either him or me," he answered. "Same as the add in the paper. That's why the details get put in the lockbox. If we did trace the cell phone back, I doubt we'd discover much from it - and HE would know that we'd traced it."

Youji had grabbed the phone from Ran, and was peering inside it. "Hey, look at this! He's got the battery rewired so that it uses a smaller size, to leave room for the key. But what the hell is this?" He indicated a small amount of gooey substance that was stuck around the wires at the top of the battery. "Bubblegum isn't usually his style."

I took a closer look at the dull grey material, and felt the blood drain from my face. "That's plastique, Youji!" I exclaimed, taking the phone from his probing fingers and cradling it gently in my own hands. I was well aware that plastique would NOT be detonated by shock, but I still felt uneasy with him poking at what was essentially a small bomb. "He's got it wired to explode - at a signal from his end, I'll bet. So there won't be any physical evidence if things go sour." I examined the charge a little closer. "It doesn't look like enough to do damage to anything but the phone, and maybe burn the hand of whoever was holding it. But I'm no explosives expert."

"Christ, he's not leaving anything to chance, is he?" Youji wondered aloud.

I grimaced, and looked him in the eye. "In his place, would any of us do differently? We were good at what we did, Youji. Not the best, but good. And he's only gotten better." I sighed, heavily. "Catching him may be the hardest job we've ever had."

Ran nodded silently, and Youji shrugged in defeat. We all knew the stakes on this - and there was no margin for error. Our friend's life, and possibly his sanity, was on the line. It was up to Weiss to save him from himself.


	3. Chapter 3

The name we gave him for the hit was real - no way to fake that without his knowing. The details were as complete as only Kritiker could make them; not surprising, since the hit we were feeding him was the very target our replacements had been after when he'd taken them out. It was, in fact, a little TOO complete, as Ran had pointed out. It looked like what it was - a briefing by professionals, for professionals - and not like what we were trying to make it, which was a contract by an anonymous nobody against a mob boss. So we'd stripped it of most of the information, eventually ending up with just the name, a photograph, and a couple of addresses where he was known to hang out.

"That will be enough for him," Ran had asserted, sealing the envelope and handing it to Nishikawa. "Anything more would make it look suspicious."

The drop had gone without a hitch. Nishikawa had received the second call less than 24 hours after we left the file in the lockbox, and had been instructed to leave the money, in unmarked bills of small denomination, in the lockbox that night, and told the 'rodents would be exterminated' within the week. Black Cat had taken the bait - now all we had to do was stake out the target without being noticed ourselves.

Easier said than done. We took turns at it - his previous hits showed that he was equally willing to work in daylight or in darkness, and we couldn't ALL watch the target 24/7.

We divided the watch up into three, 8 hours each. I'd drawn third watch, and it was my fourth shift watching the target when it happened. I was hidden inside an air vent high above a dim gambling room, watching the target play high-stakes poker with several other known mob associates. Not the best vantage point, but my first plan of posing as a waiter for the club had been shot down by Youji, when he'd pointed out that Omi would almost certainly see and recognize me. I was still blushing over that; I hated making myself look stupid.

I didn't even register what had happened at first - there was just suddenly a tiny spot of red on the target's pristine white shirt. He seemed equally surprised - just stared down at it in shock. Then he choked and more blood poured from his mouth - shot in the lung, most likely. A really awful way to die, choking on your own blood. A second tiny spot joined the first, over the heart this time, and the man keeled over.

There was pandemonium by now, the other mobsters diving for cover and pulling their guns, looking around frantically and trying to see where the shots were coming from. I almost missed it too, but a tiny glint of light on metal gave his cover away and I spotted him. He was almost directly across from me, also in the vents, and I felt a chill as I realized that if he'd decided to use the other side of the building, he'd have run right into me.

It didn't matter now, though - all that mattered was wiggling out of the vents and heading for the roof as quickly as possible. I had to catch him on the way out, or, barring that, follow him back to where he went to ground, or this would all have been for nothing. I jammed briefly in the tight confines of the vent and swore. I'd let myself go since leaving Weiss - I was by no means overweight or out of shape, but I wasn't quite as lithe as I'd once been. I shoved myself through the tight spot with a scraped shoulder to show for it, but I made it to the roof in one piece.

As I crawled up the vents, I took the time to contact the others, and hoped he wasn't monitoring the air waves. "Siberian to base - I've made contact. Am in pursuit. More when I've got him to ground."

There was a crackle before Ran's soft "Abyssinian, acknowledged," came back. Then silence - we'd agreed to maintain as much radio silence as possible beforehand.

As I climbed out of the last shaft, I could just make out his silhouette before me, perched on the edge of the roof, fiddling with something in his lap. He lifted it to his shoulder and I realized that it was his crossbow. I hung back as he fired it, and saw a long, light line trailing out behind the arrow. It thunked solidly into the next building over, and he quickly knotted the end of it to a post on this roof. Slinging the bow over his shoulder, he swung out onto the line hand-over-hand, scuttling across to the next building. Once there, he gave the line a sharp tug and it pulled away, allowing him to reel it in again. I whistled low in my throat - no traces of his passage, except for the small mark the crossbow bolt had made in the side of the building, and no one would be looking for that. Omi had not only improved his skills, he'd learned a whole set of new ones.

As he reeled the line in, he lifted his face to the weak moonlight for just a moment, and I was surprised to see what looked like tear-tracks on his face. Not that I was really close enough to tell - but the suspicious glitter at the edge of his eyes and on his cheeks would certainly seem to indicate that. What on earth would he be crying about? I lost the chance to confirm what I'd seen as he turned away again, making his way down a rickety fire escape to the street below.

Now, of course, the problem was following him. Darting to the edge of the roof, I could just make out a fire escape winding its way down the side of my building as well. The first platform was nearly two stories below me, which explained why he'd gone over to the next building, but I didn't have much of a choice. I lowered myself down over the side as far as possible, then let go and braced myself for the impact. I bent my knees as I landed and absorbed most of the shock as I'd been taught, and then I was off, thundering down the metal ladders. It made a hell of a lot of noise, but hopefully he'd just think it was someone coming after him from inside the building.

The chase that followed was utterly wild, as he ducked and weaved and ran in circles to throw possible pursuit off his trail. We went all the way across town and halfway back, and I nearly lost him at least four times. After the first few miles, he didn't seem to be aware that he was being tailed, it just seemed like he always did this to confuse any possible followers. I marveled over how paranoid he'd become, while also being in awe of his prowess. Anyone other than someone who knew him as well as I did would have been left floundering long ago.

I was panting and out of breath by the time I finally got to stop in front of a small apartment building. He'd entered the door just moments before, and I stopped to catch my breath before following him in. Didn't want him seeing me, I reasoned, but I knew I was just making excuses. Damn, apparently I WAS getting out of shape!

Finally I made my way to the door. There were fifteen apartments in the building, each with their own little mailbox with the names plastered across the front. I scanned them rapidly, not really expecting to see anything I recognized, surprised when I did. Apartment 14, Tsukiyono, O. and N. N? Who the hell was N? Had the kid gone and gotten MARRIED? Well, not that that was any weirder than him going off on this killing spree. In fact, maybe it was part of the explanation.

"Siberian to base. Target has gone to ground." I murmured into my throat mike, and gave the address.

"Balinese here," Youji's voice returned, made tinny by the earpiece. "We'll be there in half an hour, tops. Can you handle it that long?"

"Roger that." I paused, remembering the tears shining on his face in the moonlight. Softly, I added, "I don't think he's far enough gone that he'd shoot one of us in cold blood."

"Be careful, Siberian," Aya replied, voice gentle. "Don't underestimate him - he's not the Omi we all knew. He's changed, and we don't know what his limits are now."

"Hai. I'll be careful. See you soon." I pulled the headpiece off completely, and pulled out my lockpicks. I wasn't nearly as good at this break and enter stuff as Youji, but the lock on the inside door was a pathetic attempt at security and I didn't have much trouble with it. Making my way to the second floor, I prowled down the hall until I reached the door marked 14, and then I hesitated. What the hell was I supposed to do now, knock?

I finally decided to do just that. With a glance I could see that the lock on this door was NOT the same as those on the other doors in the hall - probably something Omi had added after moving in, and that meant I wasn't likely to be able to pick it. Certainly not without him noticing the sound. So I knocked.

There was a faint shuffle behind the door, and I could almost feel him hovering there. There was no peep hole, so he couldn't peak out to see who it was, and he almost certainly wasn't expecting anybody. Finally, his voice came through the door, muffled by the wood. "Hai? Dare ka?"

I had to smile. It was the same voice, though it had lost quite a bit of its vibrancy. He still sounded like he hadn't quite finished going through puberty yet. Poor guy was gonna stay an alto for the rest of his life, most likely. He shifted impatiently, and I belatedly realized I hadn't answered him yet.

Having come this far, I decided the direct route was best. "Omittchi? It's me. Ken. Can I come in?"

I heard him draw in a sharp breath, and then there was a long, expectant pause. I was just about ready to give up and try smashing the door down, when I heard a bolt being drawn.

At least four separate locks and bolts were undone before the door cracked open, and I felt even more incredulous. There was caution, and there was paranoia, and then there was ridiculous! A bright blue eye peered out at me from the crack, widened in shock, then the door was rapidly shut again. The sound of a chain sliding across answered my unasked question, and the door was flung all the way open.

He stood there, framed in the doorway, looking more exhausted and in pain than I'd ever seen him before. He was still dressed in the form-fitting dusky black outfit he'd worn for the hit, and it showed his thin ribs and spindly limbs. He'd lost a hell of a lot of weight since I'd seen him last. His hair was longer than I remembered and hung wildly about him, and the shadows around his blue eyes looked like giant bruises in the center of his face. He stared at me wordlessly, mouth opening and closing like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.

Finally, he stepped back and silently gestured for me to enter. I moved forward into the tiny space that was his front hall, and he shut the door behind me, closing all the locks again with a slightly desperate look in his eyes. He padded past me into what I guess was the living room, then stood staring about him like he wasn't sure what to do next. Except for the first question, through the door, he hadn't said a word to me.

"Omittchi?" I used the old nickname Youji had coined for him, somehow feeling that it would open him to me a little. He jumped and swung to face me, as if he'd forgotten I was there. "Omi, what happened to you? What..."

"What are you doing here?" He interrupted, his voice and expression fragile, as though he would break if I gave the wrong answer. "How did you find me?"

I paused on that one for a long moment, and his gaze flicked over me assessingly. I was just wearing jeans and a sweater, not my old assassin gear, but something in my posture must have given me away. He gave a brittle little laugh, and slumped down into a chair. "Weiss is hunting me? They brought you back just for me? I suppose I should be honoured." He shook his head, looking lost and hurt.

"Omi, why are you doing this?" I asked gently, hoping he wouldn't break on me and go for a weapon. There were plenty of them strewn around - knives, guns, rifles, daggers, you name it. No darts though, and that surprised me.

His face tightened. "I didn't have a choice. I don't have a choice." He raised his face to me, and I could see the tears in his eyes again. "Ken-kun..." he choked, hugged himself, and tried again. "I tried to call you," he whispered, rocking back and forth a little. "A year ago. I tried to call all of you, but I couldn't reach any of you. Email, phone, everything had been changed. I kept trying with you the longest." He glared up at me suddenly, his blue eyes accusing. "Ken-kun, why did you shut me out? You promised you'd always be there if I needed you!"

Guiltily, I remembered making the promise, the last time I'd seen him. I'd given him a paper with my new email and phone number on it - the same email and phone number I'd had changed to avoid the press a little over a year ago. "God... god, Omi, I'm sorry. I never thought... I had to change all my contact info a while ago, but it never occurred to me... I'm sorry." Apologizing didn't seem good enough somehow, but then nothing really seemed good enough. My friend had tried to ask me for help, and I hadn't been there when he'd needed me.

He hugged himself a little tighter. "It doesn't matter any more," He said brokenly. "I did what I had to do, and you can't change that now. No one can." He stood again, paced back and forth a few times, then turned to face me with his fists clenched. "Go away, Ken-kun. Go away and tell them you couldn't find me. Please." His voice was desperate, but his gaze was steady on mine, and I knew abruptly that he was offering me my life. If I didn't leave, he was going to kill me, to keep his secret safe.

"The others are already on their way," I said, stalling for time. He shook his head.

"I'll be gone by the time they get here. Please, Ken-kun, for our old friendship. Don't make me break the last piece of my soul." He sounded so pitiful when he said it, like he was begging me. Hell, he WAS begging me. But I couldn't just let it go, and leave him like this. Not like this.

I took a step closer to him, hands out to my side unthreateningly. "Omittchi, I can't leave. They sent us after you first, because we knew you best, and they were hoping we could bring you back alive so they could help you. If we fail, the next people they send will have orders to kill. Omi, please. Come back with me, let us help you. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me, but please let me help now!"

He shook his head again, but there was a weary resignation in his eyes. "I can't run away, Ken-kun. I can't run away from what I've done, what I've become. I made my choices, and I'll have to live with them. If I have to die... then so be it. But don't let it be at your hands, please!"

"I can't kill you," I said truthfully. I'd known from the first moment I saw those haunted, hopeless eyes that I wouldn't be able to bring myself to kill him. He was my friend, and he needed my help. "I only want to help you. Omi..." Instinctively I gathered him up in a hug, holding him tightly to me. He shuddered in my embrace, struggling for a moment, before collapsing against my shoulder and sobbing in despair. I hushed him and stroked his hair, rocking him gently and murmuring soothing words. For the first time, he didn't try to hide his sorrow from me, and let it come pouring out against my shirt. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, we could save him yet.

"Omi?" the hesitant, half-familiar voice came from behind me, and Omi jerked back from me like he'd been shot.

"Iiya... dame!" he cried, and I had half a second to realize that he was yelling at the person behind me before I was picked up and slammed into a wall. Crushing force pinned me there, my face shoved against the hard surface until I could barely breathe, though I couldn't feel a hand on me. Dimly, in the background, I could hear Omi pleading with someone to let me go, but whoever it was apparently wasn't listening. The vise-like grip on my whole body tightened, and I suddenly remembered where I'd felt this particular sensation before.

"Nagi..." I gritted out, forcing my head to turn against the pain, until I could see him. He stood in the doorway to the rest of the house, his power crackling in the air around him as he stared straight at me, his gaze wild and unfocused. Abruptly, Omi darted between us, trying to break his concentration.

"Nagi! Nagi, don't! It's Ken-kun, you remember, my friend! Nagi, please, let him go! He wasn't hurting me! Gods, Nagi, you can't use your powers like this, it'll kill you! PLEASE!" He latched onto the younger boy's arm and tugged frantically, and finally succeeded in turning Nagi's attention to him instead of me.

"Ken?" He sounded bewildered, as though he'd never heard the name before. The force holding me against the wall vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving me staggering and trying to catch both my breath and my balance. He turned towards me again, but his gaze was still unfocused. "Ken. I remember. I... I'm sorry..." Now that he wasn't pinning me, I had a chance to notice a bit more of his appearance. His t-shirt hung on his body like he had more bone than muscle, his skeletal frame making Omi look like the poster child for the terminally chubby. His mouth was drawn as if against a constant pain, his pale hands fluttered nervously before him, and his hair fell about his face as though it hadn't been brushed in days.

"Nagi..." Omi said softly, reaching out one hand to the ex-Schwartz boy's face in what had to be the tenderest gesture I'd ever seen him make - which, for Omi, was saying a lot. The younger assassin turned to face him, but never quite made it around. His knees seemed to give out on him before he could complete the movement, and he sagged slowly to the floor in Omi's arms.

Omi went down with him, clearly unable to support even the slight weight of the other boy, and sat on the floor with Nagi's head on his lap, fingers gently stroking the dark strands of hair. He turned pain-filled blue eyes to me.

"You see, Ken-kun? This is why I can't just give up. He's dying, and I won't leave him to be alone!"


	4. Chapter 4

I must have stood staring at him blankly for a good minute or two before I finally came up with something to say. "What the hell?" Okay, so it wasn't a particularly intelligent thing to say. But I'd never really been noted for my intelligence, and at least it let me quit just gaping like a fish out of water.

Omi sighed, then carefully gathered the lax body against him, fighting to get to his feet. I moved to help him and he gave me a surprised look, but let me support some of Nagi's weight. Most of it, actually - not that there was much to support. The kid was skin and bones, and weighed about as much as a feather. He was even paler than Ran, and there was just something about him that screamed 'sickness', even beyond the fact that he was hanging unconscious between us.

Omi directed me with a jerk of his head down the hallway, and together we maneuvered Nagi down the hall and into the bedroom. Once past the door, I was gaping again. Given the run-down state of the apartment and general feeling of edge-of-poverty the whole place had, it probably should have occurred to me to wonder what had happened to all the money Omi was making with those hits. Now I didn't have to ask - most of it was sprawled out before me.

The bedroom looked like it had been lifted from a high-tech hospital and accidentally set down here. Beeping monitors were everywhere, a complicated-looking IV stand was by the bed-head, and the bed itself was right out of a futuristic novel. We gently lifted the senseless boy back into the bed, where he'd clearly been until just recently, judging by the rumpled sheets and the frantically flashing monitors. Omi re-hooked several electrodes to various places on Nagi's body, and expertly slid the IV needle into his arm. He worked quickly and efficiently, as though he'd done all this many times before, and could do it now in his sleep.

"He won't wake up for an hour or more," he informed me in hushed tones, as I stood back and stared at him working. Omi bit his lip in a familiar worried gesture, and smoothed the sweaty bangs back off the boy's head. "He KNOWS he shouldn't be using his powers like that - but he's so protective of me." The ex-Weiss member sighed, then turned and gestured for us to leave the room.

Once back in the living room, I found myself perching awkwardly on the edge of the couch, watching as Omi sat on the floor and expertly disassembled, cleaned, and oiled the sniper rifle he'd used in the hit. It was an eerie experience, something I never thought I'd be seeing. Omi had always disliked guns.

"Well?" He asked me, watching me as he worked. As with the medical equipment, his fingers obviously knew what they were doing without any direction from his eyes. "Ask anything you want. It's pointless trying to hide now."

"How long have you been with him?" It was the first question that came to mind. Immediately other, possibly more important questions crowded in - 'why are you killing people?' for one - but I decided to wait and see what his answer would be.

He sighed, and his rapid movements over the gun barrel slowed. He looked almost hesitant. "About... four years, now."

That was NOT the answer I'd been expecting. I was beginning to feel like 'fish-out-of-water' was going to be a permanent look for me. "HUH?" I returned intelligently.

He blushed slightly. "It's not what you think! We met on the internet, long before Schwartz and Weiss ever knew of each others existence, much less faced off in battle. We hit it off, and talked a lot in chats... you know how Youji was always accusing me of spending all my nights online looking at porn?" I nodded dumbly. "Well, he was wrong. I spent most of them online talking to Nagi. He..." Now he looked wistful. "He was the first person who'd really understood me. The more we talked, the more it felt like I'd known him forever. We were both hackers, both felt 'different' from most of the people around us. I could talk to him about anything, anything at all - my past, my fears for the future, even my fears in the present." He sighed, and was silent for a long moment, the soft rag in his hands slowly burnishing the metal of the gun.

"When we met on the battlefield for the first time - it was very weird. We'd sent each other pictures, though we'd never met, so we recognized each other right away. I remember just sort of staring at him, and thinking, 'Now what are we supposed to do?'" He sighed again, and abruptly put the pieces of the gun down, drawing his knees to his chest and clasping his arms around them, burying his face in his arms. His voice, when he continued speaking, was muffled, but still intelligible. "Oddly enough, it just made us even closer. Now we could REALLY share everything... I could talk to him about how much I hated being an assassin sometimes, and he could tell me how awful it was to have his powers, and to be under Schwartz's control. We agreed that what happened between our groups was separate from our friendship, and that we wouldn't let it change anything."

He glanced up again, presumably to see how I was taking all of this. I wish I had an answer for him - I wasn't sure how I was taking this. Mostly, I just felt numb, trying to soak it all up.

"After we destroyed the Esstet base, Nagi was the only one of Schwartz left alive. For the first time in a long time, we weren't on opposite sides anymore. When we each realized the other was still alive, we agreed to meet and talk face to face. Things just sort of..." he gestured vaguely with his hands, blushing again. It looked cute on him, and reminded me of the old Omi. "Went from there. We've been together ever since."

I regarded him solemnly, thoughts churning at a rapid pace in my head. "Do you love him?" Was the next question out of my mouth, and I grimaced at my usual tactlessness.

Omi blushed harder, but met my eyes. "Hai. With all my heart. I'd die for him." He glanced down at the gun spread in pieces around him, and added with a touch of bitterness, "More to the point, I guess, I'd kill for him."

"So, he's making you do these assassinations?" It seemed like the logical conclusion to me, but his head jerked up and his eyes widened like I'd asked if the ocean was fluorescent red.

"Oh, no! No, it's not his fault at all! Ken-kun, he..." He sighed again. It was getting to be a regular occurrence from him, and I found I didn't like it much. I wanted his cheerful, outgoing personality back. "He tries to protect me from it, really. That's why he over-reacted so badly when he saw you. He knows that it's killing me to do this, and he hates himself for being the reason I'm forced to it."

"Why..." I never got the chance to ask the all-important question, because Youji's voice at the door interrupted me.

"Ken! Omi! You both still alive in there?"

I glanced at Omi, but he was staring at the threadbare carpet as if the answer to the mysteries of the universe were woven into it. "I take it you want me to get the door for them?"

He nodded, his voice choked. "Onegai? I... I'm not ready to face them just yet..." I stood and made for the door, pausing to lay a comforting hand on the top of his head as I passed him. He gave me a watery smile, and I returned it, before continuing to the hallway.

"I'm coming!" I called out to the other two, and started wrestling with the locks. Some of them were very stiff, and I wondered how Omi managed them in his weakened condition. Finally they were all off, and I swung the door open.

Youji and Ran were on the other side of the door as expected, both wearing serious, wary expressions. I gestured them inside, much as Omi had done to me earlier. "Go easy on him, guys," I murmured, leaning in so only they could hear me. "He's had a really rough time of it. I'm still not to the bottom of it, but..." I shrugged. "He's already beating himself up for what he's doing, believe me, he doesn't need us adding to it."

They both glided into the living room, only to stop and stare in amazement around them. Following their gaze, I took in the room for the first time. I'd been too busy sizing up Omi's mood earlier to really pay attention. Expensive-looking weapons and state-of-the-art computer technology littered the place, and everything else looked like it had come from the Salvation Army reject pile. Omi was hunched over in the middle of the floor, big blue eyes peering up at us through a fringe of unkempt bangs.

Surprisingly, it was Ran who went to him first. The tall red-head knelt before the shivering boy, and held his shoulders gently. "Omi," he said in that mellifluous voice of his. "You do not need to be afraid of us. We are your friends, we always have been, and we always will be. No matter what. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, kiddo," Youji put in from behind me, his voice soft as well. "Whatever might have happened in the past, we're here for you now, okay?" He moved forward and copied Ran's pose beside Omi, resting his hands over Ran's. I joined them on the other side, completing the group.

Omi sniffled once, then started crying helplessly again, the way he'd been crying on my shoulder before Nagi interrupted us. Wordlessly we embraced him, offering back all the support and love he'd given us over our years of working together. Slowly the hurting tears turned to healing ones, as he cried himself out in our arms.

Finally he was reduced to sniffles and the occasional artless tear, and we drew away a little. Somehow I wasn't surprised to find that he was the type of person who could cry for hours and end up with just red-rimmed eyes and a sniffle or two. Not like me - I got all red-faced and blotchy and basically looked like I'd picked up a killer case of hives. I said as much, and he gave a shaky laugh and hugged me again.

"Minna-kun..." he looked at each of us in turn, holding our gaze with his tear-filled blue one. "Arigatou. I hadn't realized just how much I'd really MISSED you all!"

"We've missed you too, Omittchi," Youji replied gently. "And obviously we didn't realize how much, or we would have noticed earlier that we hadn't heard from you in a long time. If you tried to get in contact with me, then I'm sorry. Changed all my addresses and phone numbers, and never even thought about it. If it weren't that Manx was my superior, she'd never have found me again, either!"

"And I apologize as well," Ran added, his slender hand slowly rubbing Omi's shoulder. Apparently Omi was having as much trouble adjusting to the touch-feely Ran as I was, because he was staring at the red-head with equal parts bemusement and wonder. It didn't stop him from leaning into the comforting touch, though. "Manx had difficulty finding me, I can only imagine what you might have gone through. We have all been lax in maintaining our ties, and we should not have been. For all that it was a difficult time in our lives, we four are still the only ones who can understand one another."

Omi looked embarrassed, and I knew what he was thinking. "Not... quite..." he admitted haltingly. Ducking his head, he proceeded to explain to them the same things he'd said to me, telling them about his odd relationship with Nagi and how it had come to them living together.

He was just winding down when a shuffling noise at the door made us all look up, and there was the topic of conversation himself, staring back at us from the doorway. Omi jumped to his feet and ran over to his - lover, I suppose, though I wasn't a hundred percent certain - and steadied him over to one of the chairs, scolding him all the way.

"Nagi! You shouldn't be up. You're wasting your strength!"

"I heard voices," the younger boy said, peering at us all uncertainly through a dark fringe of long lashes. His voice was as frail as his body, shaking and breathy though he'd barely traveled ten steps. "I remember you," he continued, gazing at each of us in turn. "You are Weiss. Omi's friends. You will not hurt him?" The last was more a plea than a question, and I could see that Youji and Ran were as touched by it as I was.

"Not planning on it," Youji replied flippantly, but there was a thread of warmth in his voice that lent his words a seriousness they might otherwise have lacked. Ran and I both nodded in support.

"We were sent, as Omi's friends," Ran stressed that part, "To find out why he was acting in this manner. It was so unlike him, that Kritiker would have been concerned even if he had not been killing innocents."

Omi flushed darkly and looked like he might start crying again, but Nagi grabbed his hand and held on tight, stroking the back with his thumb. Again, it was a startlingly tender gesture, and I realized that I was only beginning to see the depth of the relationship between these two. Lovers or not, they were closer than brothers, closer than twins even. It approached what I had always thought soul mates would act like, in fact.

"It is not his fault," Nagi said, his voice firming a little with conviction. Omi started to protest, but Nagi hushed him with a gesture and a piercing glance. "Omi does these things for me, to try to help me. I keep trying to tell him that I would rather die than see him lose his innocence," and he looked profoundly unhappy, enough so that I think we all believed him, "but he insists he would prefer losing that to losing me."

Omi knelt beside him, leaning his head onto the younger boy's knees. "I need you," he whispered softly, and I got the distinct feeling he'd briefly forgotten we were even in the room. "I can't live without you. You know that. You're worth anything to me."

Youji cleared his throat, and both boys jumped like they'd been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They blushed simultaneously, and I couldn't help but think how cute they both looked.

"As touching as that is, kiddies," he drawled, and the blushes increased. I had to chuckle. "It doesn't really explain much. Why, exactly, does Omi have to run around killing people for your sake?"

We ALL jumped with the phone rang, the shrill sound echoing through the room. I swear, someone up there had something against us getting this question answered.

Omi had turned nearly as pale as Nagi, and they were both staring at the phone as though its ringing were a death knell. The three of us turned to one another, confused, but apparently Ran and Youji had no more clue than I did.

"J-just a second," Omi stuttered, and stood slowly to pace over to the phone. He picked it up off the cradle in mid-ring, bringing it slowly to his ear as though the last thing on earth he wanted to do was answer it. "Hai?"

There was a long pause, as the three of us strained to hear something from the speaker. Nothing but garbled noise made it to us, though, and we had to settle for trying to figure out what was going on from the little Omi was saying. Nagi had gone rigid in his seat, staring fixedly at Omi, fists clenched in his lap.

Omi turned even paler, though I hadn't thought it was possible. "I can't!" He gasped, clutching at the receiver like a lifeline. "I can't do that! Please, you can't ask me to..." he was cut off harshly, and his knuckles grew steadily whiter against the bright red plastic of the phone.

"Hai," He finally said listlessly, all life gone from his voice. "Wakatta. By the end of the week." Hanging up the phone, he stared at it for a moment, then slowly slid down the wall he'd been leaning against to bury his face in his knees. A single sob escaped him, his shoulders shaking with the effort of suppressing more.

"Omi..." Nagi and I spoke with a single voice, united in our concern for our friend. He looked up at us both with haunted, tearful eyes.

"It's an-nother m-mission," he finally hiccupped, and he looked as though they - whoever they were - had asked him to shoot his best friend. Before we could ask, he swallowed and continued, voice breaking, "I h-have to k-kill M-m-manx!"


	5. Chapter 5

We all stared at him, shocked. "You've got to be kidding!" Youji finally exclaimed, his voice thin with strain. Omi shook his head and sobbed again, curling up into himself for comfort. I could only watch, feeling helpless, not knowing what to do.

"You aren't really going to do it?" I asked finally, and somehow I knew I didn't really want to hear the answer. Sure enough, Omi raised a tear-stained face to us, and nodded slowly.

"I have no choice," He whispered, the stress in his voice making it sound more like a scream of protest. There was a stunned silence again, broken only by the sound of his harsh sobs.

Nagi was the first to recover his voice. "No!" He burst out violently, and a small glass vase on the table next to where he was sitting abruptly shattered. The pieces didn't come near anyone, but he cried out as though he were in agony and clutched at his head.

"Nagi!" Omi was instantly at his side, his own tears forgotten, soothing him with soft murmurs. "Nagi, Nagi, calm down." Across the room, a window blasted outwards, and the slim boy cried out again. "Calm down, itoushi!" Omi insisted, running gentle fingers over the dark head and tense shoulders. "It's okay. It'll be okay."

Nagi glared up at him with watering eyes, gasping and clearly fighting to control himself. "Okay? Omi, they're asking you to kill the woman you think of as a mother! How will it be okay?"

"Because we're gonna sort this out," Youji replied for Omi, his tone brooking no argument. "We're gonna figure out what the hell is going on, and Omi isn't ever going to have to kill anyone again. Okay?"

"There, you see?" Omi continued to stroke Nagi's face and neck, cuddling the smaller boy to his chest reassuringly. "It will be okay. Relax, calm down, you need to get control again before you hurt yourself more." Nagi's expression was pained, but he seemed to be slowly calming, getting himself back under control. Finally he relaxed completely, panting in Omi's gentle grasp.

Something very odd was going on here. I certainly didn't remember Nagi being this volatile, nor this out of control with his powers. On the contrary, he'd always been calm and collected and in control of himself, making him a very dangerous opponent. Ran's sharp eye apparently hadn't missed the changes any more than I had, because he asked, "Nagi? What exactly is wrong with you? You're demonstrating a lack of control that you've never exhibited before."

Nagi sighed and made a token effort to extract himself from Omi's embrace, but the ex-Weiss was having none of it. He settled deeper into the chair and held Nagi's frail form against his own, both of them seeming to take comfort in the mutual touch.

"I... am no longer in control of my powers," Nagi finally confided, watching them hesitantly. "Use of them is painful to me, as you've seen. It's a very long story, and it's tied into what Omi needs to tell you, so perhaps I should wait and explain at the proper time."

"You mean we're FINALLY going to get a coherent explanation?" I blurted, then blushed. Yup, trust me to let my tongue run on without supervision from my brain.

Omi shifted, his grip on Nagi tightening as though for reassurance. "That... was Esstet," he finally said, nodding at our incredulous looks. "Some of them survived - the more powerful members. They're rebuilding - slowly. They won't be a real threat for another fifty years, at least - and it will be another hundred before they have a chance to try that summoning ceremony again."

"And they're blackmailing you into doing these assassinations?" Youji guessed shrewdly. Omi bit his lip to stop another bout of tears, and nodded. "But how? What leverage can they have over you?"

"Me," Nagi replied softly. "They're using me against him." It was his turn to sigh, and he huddled a little closer to Omi.

"At first, I was the assassin, not Omi. But, they didn't have my loyalty to Crawford to control me any more, and they quickly discovered that I was not as willing to be a puppet to them as I had been before. Especially not once Omi found me again; he had always believed that I was a good person - something no one else has ever bothered to believe about me." He gave Omi a soft smile. "I wanted to prove him right, and be more worthy of him."

Omi took up the thread, expression sorrowful. "Nagi was too powerful for them to want to let go of him. He was their best weapon, their sharpest tool. Without him to protect them, they knew they'd fall to people like Kritiker before they had a chance to consolidate their power again. So they threatened him, trying to keep control over him."

"Everything was fine, until they threatened Omi," Nagi put in, his eyes darkening with remembered pain. "Despite what he thought, I knew they could hurt him if they really wanted to. I wasn't the only psychic they had left in their forces, just the strongest by far. I was desperate, so I did something very stupid - I tried to rid myself of my powers, figuring that without them, I wouldn't be valuable enough to Esstet for them to bother with."

"How...?" I voiced the question that was on all our faces.

Nagi swallowed, looking like the next part of the story pained him physically, and continued. "One branch of Esstet was researching a way to suppress psychic powers, in case someone ever tried to use their own tricks against them. I snuck into the lab one night, and forced one of the scientists to give me the injection they'd developed." He laughed, and the sound was bitter. "I was such a fool. It hadn't been properly tested yet, he warned me of that, but I was desperate enough - and cocky enough - that I didn't care." He turned and buried his face in Omi's chest, sighing softly.

"Obviously, it did not suppress your powers," Ran commented. "What DID it do, exactly?"

"It destabilized them," Omi answered him. "Made them almost entirely unpredictable. He has almost no control over them now, and what's worse, using them is agony. On top of that, the drug itself is poisonous." He shrugged bitterly. "As far as Esstet's concerned, that's even better than just suppressing an enemy's powers, since it takes them out of the game completely."

"They're blackmailing you with the antidote," I had a sudden revelation. Omi nodded and hugged Nagi a little tighter, as though afraid he would lose him if he took his eyes off him.

"They give me just enough to keep him alive and mostly out of pain," he replied bitterly. "Every time I do a hit for them. I've become their weapon instead of Nagi, and I've got far more incentive to succeed than he ever did. One failed mission, and he'll die, in horrible pain."

"And likely taking everything and everyone near me in a final burst of telekinetic power," Nagi added. "Pain, anger and fear trigger my power now." I shuddered - we'd seen a sample of Nagi in a rage when he'd destroyed the Schrient mansion after Tot's 'death'. It wasn't something I wanted to mess with - he'd reduced the huge building to tinder.

"And now they are asking you to kill Manx?" Ran sounded like someone who had followed something through to its logical conclusion, and wasn't happy with what he'd found.

Omi nodded again. "Th-they said she's getting too close to me." He gave a shaky little laugh. "I guess they don't know that she'd already called you guys in. They said," he took a deep breath. "That if I messed this up or refused the hit, they not only wouldn't give me any of the antidote, but if Nagi survived, they'd cut the payment dosage in half, so I'd have to kill for them twice as often." He shuddered, and I instinctively reach up and wrapped my arm around his shoulders.

"Hey. Omi, it's okay. We're gonna work this all out, for sure! We're backing you up now, and we'll figure a way out of this! When has Weiss ever faced a challenge we couldn't overcome together?" I was babbling and I knew it, but it seemed to be working, as he smiled at me hesitantly.

"This antidote. How does it work?" Ran asked, ever the practical one.

"There are several parts to it, and they have to be mixed exactly right," Omi replied. "Then they get fed through an IV drip into his bloodstream. It's an ongoing process... I can't just give him a big dose and leave it for awhile, it has to be redone four times a day. More often if he uses his powers."

"How much do you have now?" I asked. Omi frowned, calculating.

"Given how much effort he put into lifting you off me... and then shattering the vase and the window... if he doesn't use his powers again, maybe enough for three more days."

Nagi blinked. "So little? But your next mission wouldn't normally have come for another week or more..."

Omi looked very unhappy, and he answered slowly. "I... didn't want to mention it to you, but... I've been having to use more and more of it, lately. I think your body is adjusting to it, creating defenses for it. It IS a sort of poison in and of itself."

"Either that, or they're giving you weaker doses of it," Youji pointed out. Omi and Nagi stared at him.

"But why..." Omi began, bewildered.

"To make you more dependant on them," Nagi cut him off, expression thoughtful. "If you thought that I was adjusting to it, they could gradually water down the dosage until I needed it constantly, which would put you entirely under their control."

"They wouldn't!" Omi protested weakly. "Would they? If I found out they were cheating me..."

"What could you do about it?" Nagi shrugged philosophically. "Refuse a hit? Argue with them?" Omi had no answer to that, and looked deeply upset by the notion.

"So what are we going to do about it?" I asked, turning possibilities over in my head.

"That depends," Youji answered. "How closely do they watch your actions, Omittchi?"

Omi shook his head. "Not at all, as far as I can tell. As long as I carry out the instructions in the amount of time they specify, they leave me to myself. I tested it a few times, at first, before we realized how serious Nagi's condition really was. They never said anything."

"Yoshe. Then here's what we're going to do. We're going to contact Manx, since we have to do that anyway, and let her know what's been going on. Then you're going to set up the hit, just like you would normally. I'm going to get you some special bullets for your rifle, paint pellets basically. She'll be wearing body armour just in case something goes wrong, but she usually does anyway, believe it or not. The paramedics will be Kritiker agents who are in on the whole thing - she'll be pronounced dead on the scene. The papers will be screaming about Okada Chiyako's assassination, and..."

I blinked. "Who's?" The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. Ran and Nagi looked equally confused.

"Didn't you know, Ken-kun? That's Manx's real name." Omi supplied.

"Okada... the police commissioner?" I shook my head. "No, I didn't know. Should have guessed, I suppose. I haven't really been keeping up with that sort of thing."

"So we fake Manx's assassination... then what?" Omi asked.

Youji shrugged. "Then you meet with them to get the antidote, right? So we'll tail you, and when they show themselves, we'll grab them and force them to tell us how we can cure him permanently, or at least what the formula for the antidote is, so we can make it ourselves."

Nagi frowned. "It won't be that simple. They always have at least one guard, sometimes more. Crawford was their most reliable precognitive, but they do have others, who might warn them."

Ran shrugged. "There is nothing we can do about that. If it happens, we will deal with it then. We four faced Schwartz and come out alive, and by your own words, they have no one that powerful now."

Nagi gave a dry chuckle, which somehow held very little amusement. "You survived fighting us because we wanted you to. Crawford and Schuldich enjoyed watching your efforts to stop us. They were playing with you."

"They weren't playing in that last battle!" I objected. "And you'll note we all survived that, and they didn't!"

Nagi shrugged. "Manx's appearance and the collapse of the citadel was unexpected - why Crawford didn't foresee it, I'll never know. Even his powers were fallible, I suppose. I survived by holding off the rubble with my powers - I still don't know how all of you lived through it."

"Neither do we," Youji shrugged. "But I'm not gonna argue with God, or whoever. At any rate, Ran's right. There's not much we can do about it, so there's no point worrying about it."

Omi gave us all a tremulous smile. "Minna-kun... arigatou. I... I've been so helpless, and... having you here with me again... it makes me feel like I have a chance at winning again."

"Mochiron!" I reassured him. "You know we'd all do anything to help you, Omittchi!" I reached over and patted his hand where it rested over Nagi's, then frowned at the delicate feeling of his bones beneath the skin.

"Na, Omi, when was the last time you ate something? You and Nagi both look like you're both competing for best skeleton impression." I asked, worried about him.

He blinked, and had to think about it. That wasn't a particularly encouraging sign. "I'm not sure," he finally said slowly. "A few days ago, I guess. I don't really remember."

"I have trouble keeping food down," Nagi added, then glared up at the boy holding him. "But you should be taking better care of yourself, Omi!"

Omi shrugged, and I got to my feet. "I'm going to make you both something to eat," I said, padding towards the kitchen. "Then you should try to get some sleep. We'll take care of letting Manx know what's going on, and arranging everything. Okay?"

The soft, hesitantly happy smile Omi gifted me with was the closest he'd come that night to the sweet, innocent boy I remembered. It sent a shaft of pain through my chest near my heart, and I realized in that moment that I would have done anything to bring back the joy in his life. Gazing at him gently holding his koi close to his body, I silently swore that I would do anything and everything in my power to see that the shadow was lifted from their shoulders, and give them both a chance to be normal boys for once in their lives.


	6. Chapter 6

Hard as it was, we agreed that we needed to limit our contact with Omi as much as possible before the hit. We kept in touch via a supposedly secure computer link that Kritiker set up, but with so much on the line none of us wanted to risk Esstet discovering the ruse. So, we used it as little as possible.

We'd also agreed that Omi should work the hit as if absolutely nothing were different, though he shouldn't appear too eager to finish the job. None of us knew exactly when or where the shot would come from, but the Kritiker 'paramedics' were standing by twenty-four/seven, just waiting for their cue. We all hovered around Manx whenever she left the police building, trying to seem inconspicuous but probably failing. Well, let Esstet believe she had called us back as bodyguards or something.

When it finally happened, it was completely unexpected. Ran and I had accompanied Manx out of the building on her lunch break - Youji was asleep, having taken late watch the night before. The park by the waterfront where Manx often ate her lunch was filled with people, all running and laughing and generally enjoying the warm summer day. We weren't being particularly watchful; it was such an incredibly public place that a hit would have been difficult to pull off.

When the sharp report of a rifle sounded and a huge crimson stain started spreading across the front of Manx's blouse, I thought at first that something had gone horribly wrong. Either Omi hadn't used the dummy bullets, or by some incredible coincidence, someone else had tried an assassination attempt. It looked so real, and the pained shock on Manx's face wasn't feigned. She slumped slowly to the grass of the park path, and people around us started screaming.

Ran and I rushed forward, me yelling at some businessman with a cell phone to call the paramedics, quickly. I guess I must have looked convincing, because he hastily ended his call, white-faced, and dialed the emergency number. Kritiker had arranged to have all calls to the paramedics routed through their base for the next few days, so our people would be on the way shortly, with the real ambulance team none the wiser to our deception.

I was more than a little relieved to feel Manx's pulse beating strongly against my searching fingers, and nodded slightly at Ran. I guess the shock of the impact had hurt, even though it hadn't actually done any damage. The paint pellet looked disturbingly convincing, and so long as we didn't let anyone get close enough to see that there was no actual entry or exit wounds, our ploy was going to succeed. Manx was lying utterly still, even her chest barely rising and falling with the tiny breaths she was taking.

Our team arrived quickly, Manx was checked over, and one of the attendants shook his head silently. The 'body' was lifted onto a stretcher, covered with a sheet, and the ambulance pulled somberly away, lights and sirens still. Already reporters were converging on the scene, and as unobtrusively as possible, Ran and I slipped away.

Just that quickly, it was over. We made our way back to the hotel suite where we'd all been crashing since the whole mission had started, and settled in to wait. Manx joined us after several hours, having been smuggled out of the hospital morgue by more Kritiker agents. As far as the world was concerned, police commissioner Okada Chiyako was well and truly dead. The fake blood on her shirtfront still looked distressingly real, and I found it difficult to look at her until she'd changed.

Thereafter followed one of the worst hours of my life, as we waited for Omi to contact us. We all stared at that damn computer screen like a revelation from god was scheduled to appear at any moment, and if we blinked we'd miss it. Omi hadn't yet reported in, and that worried us all. He was supposed to have checked in immediately after returning from the scene of the shooting. I paced back and forth, knowing I was irritating the others, but unable to keep still.

Finally, finally, the damn machine beeped. I nearly tripped over a loose throw rug in my haste to work my way back around the couch to where I could see the monitor, and Youji didn't fare much better in his dash from the kitchen doorway. We stood staring at the single line of text, disbelieving.

/*Mission failed - target aware. Hostage taken.*/

I think I summed up what we were all feeling pretty well. "Oh, shit!"

 

* * *

By the time the three of us made it to Omi's apartment, half a dozen possibilities and alternatives had been discussed and discarded. There had been no more after that single transmission, though we'd sent endless queries. Hostage could have referred to either of them... and if Omi had been taken, it would explain the brevity of the message. We'd all seen what happened when Nagi became upset, and he'd be in no shape to be sitting at a computer.

Sure enough, we could see the damage to their apartment door from all the way down the hall. It hung askew, and there were marks around the lock that indicated it had probably been forced open. Cautiously we entered the apartment, weapons at the ready in case the message had been a trap set by Esstet to lure us out. It felt strange to wear the heavy glove containing my claws in it again, the stiff leather unfamiliar in my grasp after so long. I was a little reassured that Ran and Youji both seemed far more comfortable with their weapons of choice.

The entire apartment had been turned inside out, expensive weapons and computer components smashed and destroyed as though flung against the walls with impossible force. As we'd half expected, we found Nagi passed out in the center of the living room, hand still clutching the keyboard that had been attached to the computer link. It was the only intact piece of electronics in the room.

Since none of us had any idea of how to administer the antidote, we had to wait until Nagi woke on his own. In the meantime we searched fruitlessly for clues as to what had happened. If there had ever been any, they had been destroyed in the wake of the telekinetic blast Nagi had apparently released after contacting us.

I was the first to notice him stirring, blinking hazily and struggling to sit. Hastily I dropped to the floor beside him, propping him up and providing a steady anchor for him to orient on. Ran and Youji hovered over my shoulder disconcertingly.

"Nagi. Are you okay? What happened?"

Nagi stared blankly at me for several long moments, before recognition entered his eyes. "Ken? What... ohhhhh..." he moaned and pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead. "Oh, gods, that hurts... what... why... why didn't Omi give me the..." His eyes flew open and he clutched at my shoulder.

"Omi! Ken, they took Omi! It was a trap, they knew you'd found him and were setting him up, they were waiting when he got back..." he was babbling, fingers clenching and unclenching against my shoulder bone. I heard a warning rattle from some of the scattered debris around us, and I knew I had to head off another fit before he could send himself into oblivion again.

"Nagi! Nagi, calm down, it's okay, we're here and we're going to get him back. I promise. We'll get him back. But I need you to stay focused, and tell me what happened!"

With a visible struggle, Nagi calmed himself, and the hovering bits and pieces settled down again. Panting and leaning against me for support, he told us the whole story.

"They showed up just after he left, one of the sub-lieutenants and a couple of telekinetics. Featherweights, both of them, but they were still strong enough to keep me contained..." he looked disgusted with himself, and I hastened to reassure him.

"There wasn't anything you could have done, Nagi. You're in no shape to fight anyone, much less another telekinetic. Just tell us what happened."

"They hauled me in here, and sat me on the floor. I was dizzy and disoriented, they caught me halfway through a dose of the antidote, and I couldn't even think clearly enough to find a way to warn Omi. They knew you'd staged the assassination, somehow they knew everything. I think they have this whole place bugged, so they must have heard us planning. Either that, or one of their precogs warned them."

Youji swore. "Once they knew we'd contacted him, they must have realized they'd lost their hold over him. The whole thing was a setup to distract us, so they could grab Omi when he wasn't looking. But why leave Nagi behind? He's their only insurance against Omi fighting back."

"Unless... they aren't planning to keep him alive," I said grimly. "They know Nagi will die soon enough without the antidote, and the explosion he'll set off will neatly destroy most if not all of the evidence here. But why not just kill him outright?"

Nagi paled. "Omi told me... lately they had been pressuring him to try an experimental technique, to give him psychic powers. It's something they've been developing for a long time, trying to increase the potential of their existing psychics and create new ones. He refused, of course... but what if they're planning to use him as a test subject?"

I swore. The idea of Omi as Esstet's guinea pig was a highly disturbing one, and I couldn't shake the image of him tied down to a surgical table, having horrible things done to him, from my mind. There are times when it really bites to have an imagination as active as mine could be.

Nagi was shaking in my arms, obviously fighting to keep from crying. I could see that he was holding control over himself by the thinnest of threads, and I wasn't certain I wanted to find out what would happen if he lost it again. I looked up at Ran and Youji above me.

"We've got to get him back. Now, before they can do anything to him. And before Nagi's condition gets beyond help."

Youji shrugged helplessly. "How? We have no idea where to even start looking!"

"Nagi knows."

Youji and I stared at Ran, then back at the shivering form huddled against my chest. "Of course," I exclaimed softly. "Nagi, the lab where you went when you tried to rid yourself of your powers - would it still be operational? Or do you know of any others where they might have taken him?"

Nagi frowned, thinking it over. "It's possible they took him there," he admitted. "They do have other labs, but I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them. I only knew the location of that one because I'd been called on once to contain an out-of-control subject. That's how I found out about the experimentation in the first place."

"Even if they're not at that particular lab, it's a place to start looking," Youji nodded, rising from where he was crouched over Nagi and I. "If nothing else, we may be able to find clues to the whereabouts of the other labs there. So what are we waiting for?"

I shifted Nagi off my lap, and scrambled to my feet. "I'm ready." I smacked my left fist into my claw glove with an anticipatory grin on my face. "Let's teach these goons what it means to mess with one of Weiss."

Ran nodded, eyes narrowed. "How do we get there, Nagi? And what sort of defenses are we looking at?"

Nagi had forced himself to his feet, and was swaying slightly before us, a stubborn look on his face. "I'm going with you," he said, his tone brooking no argument. I gaped at him, and argued anyway.

"Are you kidding me? You can barely stand upright!" I objected. "You're in no shape to be..."

"I'm going with you," He said again, cutting me off. I could see in his eyes that he was deadly serious. "I won't tell you where it is unless you take me with you."

I floundered, unable to come up with a convincing argument in the face of his obstinence. Ran jumped in.

"Ken is right. If we're worrying about keeping you in one piece, we may make a mistake that costs Omi his life. We're wasting time now by arguing about it." I could see the words were making no impression on Nagi at all.

"I don't know how to set up the antidote," he said, his voice soft but firm. "Neither do you. In another hour, two at most, I'm going to lose control entirely. When it happens, I intend to be on Esstet grounds, not in a building full of innocent people." His words brought us all up short; in our concern for Omi, we'd forgotten entirely the very serious repercussions that would occur should he die.

He saw the realization in our eyes, and added, "I know most of Esstet's psychics on sight, and their powers. I can warn you what to watch for from any guards you might have to face. I also have access codes to get us in, that Omi and I hacked two days ago in preparation for raiding the lab with you. I may be a hindrance to you physically - but can you truly afford to attempt this without me?"

We were all silent for a few moments, debating with ourselves; then Ran, Youji and I exchanged glances. "Let's do it," I finally said, giving in to the inevitable. Nagi was right - we really had no option at all. I only prayed we'd be in time to save Omi.


	7. Chapter 7

Though the lab was situated in the middle of a dense forest about half an hour from Tokyo, all the trees within about a hundred yards of the complex had been cleared away. A ridiculously high fence ringed the open area, wicked looking barbed wire edging the top. The occasional rotting bird or squirrel body at the base of the fence let us know that touching it would be a really bad idea, and we could hear the hum of electricity along the wires in the still air. To top it off, it was mid-afternoon and the sun was shining brightly, leaving not a whole lot of shadows for cover. It made me uncomfortable to be working in daylight - traditionally Weiss' missions were carried out under the cover of darkness.

None of the trees near the fence were anywhere near high enough for us to try the trick that had gotten us into the Schrient mansion - shooting a rope over the top of the fence then sliding along it from the treetops. In addition, there were surveillance cameras everywhere. We'd had to disable two of them already just to get this close, which meant we had very little time before our presence was noted and the alarm was sounded.

Nagi had made it this far under his own power, but he wasn't holding up well. Leaning against a tree, he was trembling visibly and panting for breath. Sweat stood out on his face and the strain of effort was clear in his expression. He wasn't going to make it much further without help, and we all knew the impending disastrous explosion was getting closer with every moment that went by.

"There's a gate, about a hundred feet from here," he gasped, voice ragged with tension. He pointed shakily off to the left, and by squinting I could just make it out. "I have codes that should open it without setting off the alarms. After that, though, we're almost sure to be spotted crossing the grounds."

"We'll have to take that risk," Youji said. "There's no other way in, and we can't afford to wait for darkness. Let's go."

Nagi stumbled twice on the way to the gate, and finally I slung my arm around his waist, supporting him. He looked frustrated at needing the help, but he didn't protest, leaning his weight against me.

Ran took care of the cameras around the gate, and Nagi reached up with a shaking hand to punch in the access code. The little keypad beeped twice, then the lock clicked back and the gate swung slowly open.

"Keep your eyes open," Ran instructed as we filed through the narrow passage. "This has been far too simple. Stay alert and watch your backs."

"Hai, hai, okaa-san," Youji teased him, and Ran frowned. I just shook my head, glad to see that we were falling back into being a team so easily. We braced ourselves, then took off across the open area, heading for the door directly across from us.

The only warning of danger we had was a single, sharp bark; then the dogs were on us, snarling and biting ferociously. From my left, I heard Youji cry out, and then his wires sang. Two of the dogs were caught up in the fine strands, choked yelps of pain cut off as their windpipes were severed. Ran was fending off two more with his katana, which left the last two for me.

I clenched my fist around the lever that made the claws spring forward, and slashed back at the warm, furry body throwing itself against me. Nagi was clutching at my off side as the second dog jumped at him, crying out in pain as the teeth connected in his forearm. I had just that much warning before the blast hit me, sweeping me back off my feet and sending me tumbling head over heels. One of the dogs was tangled up with me, whining in confusion and fear. I knew how it felt.

The sheer force of it was crushing my body against itself, until it felt like my chest was going to implode. I could hear my ribs creaking in protest, and there was a horrible wet choking noise beside me as the dog's body gave out beneath the pressure.

"N-Nagi..." I gritted out, fighting to draw breath into my squeezed lungs. Just when I was seeing stars from lack of oxygen, the devastating force vanished, leaving me gasping for air.

Struggling to my hands and knees, I saw that Ran and Youji hadn't fared much better. Ran was pulling himself up against the building of the wall, and I swear there was a dent where his body had impacted. Youji had managed to haul the two bodies of the dogs around to take the brunt of the blast on his side, but he was bleeding heavily from his thigh and one shoulder where he'd been bitten, and was cursing profusely.

Nagi was curled up on the ground, clutching his head. I could see the glitter of his eyes from between his arms, so he was still conscious, but he looked like he was in a lot of pain. The bite on his arm seeped blood, but thankfully wasn't particularly serious.

I hauled myself over to his side. "Hey, you okay?" It was a stupid question, since he obviously wasn't okay, but it was the best I could do on short notice.

Clenching his fists, he pushed himself upright, gasping from the effort. "I'm sorry. I..." He coughed, doubling over, and a phantom breeze ruffled my hair and tugged at my clothes.

"Calm down, kiddo," Youji rested his hand against Nagi's shoulder, having made his own way over to us. "We're almost there. Just hang in a little longer, and with any luck, this will all be over for good soon."

We all sort of supported each other as we staggered over to where Ran was waiting at the door, katana out and ready to face any more surprises. He looked a little shaky too, and though there were no visible wounds on him, I was willing to bet he'd be a mass of black and blue in the morning.

Nagi didn't have the strength to work the keypad this time, so he gave me the code and I entered it. The door hissed open like a vault or an airlock, and the corridor gaped darkly beyond it.

"Still no sign of any guards," Youji noted, then grimaced. "Well, except for the dogs. But still..."

"They're likely at the lab itself," Nagi informed him breathily. "It's not far - down this hall, to the left."

"Then let's go." Ran moved into the doorway first, gliding forward with that cat-like grace of his, katana held in defensive stance before him. We couldn't walk three abreast in the narrow hall, so Youji scooped Nagi up into his arms, grimacing at the strain on his wounded shoulder, but making no sound of protest. I took the rear, claw out and ready, praying the coming confrontation wouldn't take too long. Nagi was fading fast, and that meant we were rapidly running out of time.

At the T-junction at the end of the hall, Ran paused and peered cautiously around the corner. Pulling back quickly, he motioned us forward.

"Three guards," he hissed quietly, long practice having removed any trace of sibilance from his voice. Another foot away, and I'd never have been able to hear him. It was a trick we'd all learned, during those long bloody nights, years ago.

Nagi shook his head, to clear it I guess, and peeked around the corner to see for himself. Nodding, he pulled back.

"The same two telekinetics he had when he grabbed me. The other one is a teleporter - he can only move himself short distances, but in a close-range fight it can be very confusing. Grabbing him doesn't work, he just vanishes out from beneath you, so watch your back at all times."

"What about the telekinetics?" I asked. He shrugged.

"Featherweights, both of them. They won't be able to hurt you directly, but if there are small objects lying around, they can throw them at you. With enough fine control, that can be disconcerting, because they don't follow the trajectory your mind anticipates for them."

"There may be others inside as well," Ran pointed out. "We'll have no way of knowing what reinforcements they have until they arrive. Nagi, stay here but keep an eye out, and warn us of anyone you see coming. Let's go."

Youji set Nagi down, and the three of us charged around the corner. Ran managed to catch one of the telekinetics by surprise, scoring a serious hit with his sword, and then the battle began in earnest.

Youji's wires sang out towards the second telekinetic as I charged towards the teleporter. He just smirked at me, and the instant I came within range, his form blinked out of existence. A curse from behind me was the only warning of something else going wrong, before the near-invisible strands of the wires suddenly tangled my feet.

"Oi, Youji!" I protested, stumbling against the wall, and managing to turn and deflect a blow from the teleporter at the last second. He'd pulled a heavy club from somewhere, and while he didn't seem terribly proficient with it, one hit would be enough to put me out of commission for a while.

"Not my fault!" Youji protested from a few feet away, struggling to unwrap his weapon from around me. The telekinetic had her eyes half-closed and her hand outstretched towards me, and I realized that she'd managed to catch the wires and redirect them out of Youji's control.

Ran charged past me to swing at the teleporter, who vanished just before the sword connected. I managed to kick the last of the wires free and took a swipe at the woman who'd been controlling them. She bounced out of the way with only a minor scratch to show for my effort, but her concentration had been broken. Youji hastily reeled in the wires, putting them out of reach.

"Just use your fists," Ran instructed him as he feinted and thrust at the teleporter. Youji complied, spinning to land a solid punch on the injured telekinetic, who'd been sneaking up behind him. I saw several sharp-looking metal objects fall to the ground nearby as the telekinetic slumped over, apparently unconscious.

"One down, two to go!" I exclaimed, swiping again at the woman before me. She gestured hastily, and a table skittered along the floor from farther down the hall to smack into the small of my back. It didn't hurt, but it did set me off balance and sent me to one knee.

Before I could push myself back up, I felt a weird little tickling sensation on the back of my hand. Glancing down, I watched in horror as a massive hairy spider ponderously crawled up my hand towards my arm. It was huge, and I swear I could see the poison dripping off of its fangs.

Yelling in disgust, I flung the horrible thing away from me as hard as I could. I was hardly what you could term a 'sissy', but if there was one thing that truly, truly terrified me, it was spiders. Somewhere in the back of my head, logic was whispering that spiders didn't even have fangs, but fear easily won out over rationality.

I swore as more of the awful things swarmed out of vents near the floor and rushed up my legs, frantically trying to brush them off my body. Three more appeared for every one I got rid of, and I started to seriously panic.

"Ken!" I heard Youji yelling at me, but the words didn't make it past the terror in my brain. "Ken! What's wrong? What're you doing?"

"Get 'em off me!" I screamed hysterically, raking my claws down my own leg to scrape them away. Blood seeped sluggishly from the furrows I'd made, and the spiders rushed for it like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Any second I knew I'd feel the sharp stinging pain of a bite, followed by another, and another, and then I'd die writhing on the floor from the awful poison...

Somebody tackled me from behind as I took another swipe at my legs, pinning me to the floor as I squirmed and shouted hoarsely. I could feel the multitudes of hairy legs wriggling over my skin, oh my god, they'd gotten inside my clothes, oh god, oh god...

Then suddenly they vanished, and I was left panting on the floor, Ran straddling my back and keeping me from doing any more damage to myself. Stunned and a little dazed, I glanced around to see where the swarm of arachnids had disappeared to. There was no sign of them, nothing to show that they had ever existed. Even the vents they'd appeared from were gone.

"What happened?" Ran let me up as I returned to coherency, and I turned to see that all three of our opponents were down and bleeding on the floor. A fourth was dangling from Youji's wires, choking and fighting to draw breath past the constriction at her throat. As I watched, her body jerked once more and then slumped over, lifeless.

"What the hell was that?" I croaked out, feeling the last of the terror draining from my system. I flushed, more than a little embarrassed, and Youji shook his head.

"She's a telepath," Nagi said, creeping around the corner. "She specializes in pulling your worst nightmare out of your mind, then convincing you that you're living through it. But she can only concentrate on one person at a time."

"What did you see?" Youji asked curiously, as he tore a strip from one of the fallen telekinetic's clothing to quickly bind the wound on my leg. I shook my head and muttered something incomprehensible, and he chuckled.

"Okay, Ken-ken, I'll let you keep your phobias to yourself." Helping me stand, he gestured towards the door. "We're keeping our hosts waiting, boys. Hate to be rude."

Nagi nodded, and Ran reached for the doorknob. There was no keypad beside this one - anyone who made it this far was presumed to have the proper clearance. Sloppy of them, but I wasn't going to protest our luck.

The door crashed open before Ran could touch it, sending the redhead stumbling back into me. I peered around his shoulder and cursed - the man standing calmly in the doorway had a gun trained directly on Ran's heart. From the size and caliber of the weapon, it looked like the bullet would probably punch right through his body and get me, too.

"Welcome, gentlemen," The platinum-blond man fairly purred in lightly accented Japanese. "We've been awaiting you." His cold brown eyes flicked briefly over the bodies in the hallway, before dismissing them as unimportant. "A pity my associates couldn't give you a more entertaining welcome," was all he said.

"Wellesley," Nagi gasped out, leaning heavily against Youji for support. He spat the name like it tasted bad, glaring for all he was worth at the Englishman.

"Ah, Naoe-san, how good of you to join us," Wellesley greeted him smoothly. "I'm certain you're all quite anxious as to the fate of your friend, yes? Why don't I bring you to check on him." He stepped to one side, the gun still firmly trained on Ran, and gestured for us to precede him through the doorway.

Ran moved stiffly forward, and I trailed behind him, not certain of what we could do. Even without the threat of the gun, we didn't know what, if any, powers this man had. I heard Youji and Nagi shuffling along behind me, and saw Wellesley following from the corner of my eye.

The room laid out before us was like something out of a science-fiction writer's nightmares, strewn with unidentifiable equipment and computer readouts. On a metal table in the center, Omi had been laid out, strapped down and one sleeve torn off to allow an IV needle to be inserted into his arm. A man in a white lab coat was affixing a bag of clear yellow liquid to the IV, while two others stood by and took notes from the monitors. In the back, a tall man of unidentifiable age stood watchfully, and I could feel the power radiating off of them.

"Good evening boys," he said to us in a grating voice. His accent was harsh and it was hard to make out what he was saying.

Nagi had turned pale at the sight of Omi's frail form lying stretched out on the examining table, and I heard a couple of glass beakers near him rattle before he took a deep breath and got control of himself.

"What are you doing to him?" He demanded harshly, his grip on Youji's arm white-knuckled.

"Why, we are improving him," the old man chuckled. "Granting him abilities he has never dreamed of possessing. When the procedure is complete, he will be our most powerful tool in existence."

"No!" The little plastic bag of fluid on the IV stand exploded, splattering all over both Omi and the scientist. The white-coated man made a disconcerted sound, staring in shock at the remnants of the bag in his hand.

Nagi panted, struggling to stay focused, and turned his gaze on the old man in the corner. "Let him go!" he ordered, his voice reedy and thin.

"Oh, I think not," the man replied. "That was very impressive for you to muster that much control, but I'm well aware of your current limitations. And if you try something so foolish again, Wellesley will not hesitate to shoot one of your new friends."

On the table, Omi stirred faintly. Blue eyes cracked open and he slowly turned his head to face us. He'd obviously been sedated with something fairly powerful, but was fighting through the effects.

"Itoushi..." he whispered, catching and holding Nagi's dark gaze. He didn't even seem to see the rest of us, having eyes only for his lover. "You're okay. I was afraid..."

"Ah. I'm okay for now, Omi." Nagi pulled himself upright and let go of Youji's supporting arm, clearly trying to be strong so that Omi wouldn't worry for him.

"How very touching," Wellesley sneered, and I felt the gun barrel digging into my back.

"Closest you'll ever get to real love," I snarled at him, glaring back over my shoulder. He shrugged, looking unoffended.

"Love is a weakness," he replied carelessly. "As is friendship. Without those things, we'd never have been able to control either of them."

"Love... is a strength..." Omi gasped, sweat popping out on his forehead. "With Nagi by me... I can do things... I wouldn't ever dream of without him."

"Omi..." Nagi's eyes widened, and his expression firmed. "I won't let you hurt him."

With a strangled sound, Wellesley flew back against the far wall. The gun went off, the bullet flying harmlessly over my shoulder, and I spun, claws out, to take out his throat. Youji had already moved to contain the three scientists, and Ran was flying towards the old man, sword held ready before him.

"No!" Nagi called Ran off, snarling, "He's mine!" A wave of force flew from him towards the Esstet agent, sending the old man stumbling back. I could see the agony his efforts were causing him in the whiteness of his face and the way he had his lower lip clenched between his teeth, but he managed to keep control. Ran had changed his direction, and was now moving to free Omi of the straps. I decided to keep back out of the way.

"You may have been more powerful than me once, but you cannot hope to defeat me in your present state, child!" The man swept his own arm towards Nagi, and everything between them shattered as the two telekinetic forces met in the middle.

The roar of power was incredible, and I could see Nagi losing ground in the struggle. He was forced back one pace, then another, and finally dropped to one knee. I tried to make my way to him, to help support him, but found I was actually pinned against the wall from the residual power.

Eyes blazing in fury, Nagi summoned all of his strength for one final push. "I will not fail Omi!" He cried, and flung his arms outward.

The man was shoved right back through the glass observation window behind him, crying out in pain. Staggered and wounded, he shoved himself to his feet, stared open-mouthed at Nagi for a brief moment, saw Ran moving towards him with a clear intent to kill in his face, and turned and fled.

I started after him instantly, but was halted by Omi's soft cry of distress. Seeing him staring back over my shoulder, I turned to see Nagi huddled, shivering, on the floor, arms wrapped around his own torso like he was trying to hold himself in one piece.

"Nagi!" I skidded to a halt, then made my way back to the dark-haired boy, concerned by the amount of power he'd had to gather to defeat the old man.

"I..." He glanced up at me, eyes wide and unfocused. "I can't... hold it..." His entire body shuddered, and pretty much everything breakable around us shattered all at once. "I can't..."

"Nagi!" Omi turned to the scientists, still held immobile by Youji's tight grip on his wires. "Do something!" He insisted, gesturing at the pathetic form beside me. "Or you'll all die with him, when he loses control of his powers!"

One glance at the still vibrating bits and pieces of their lab seemed to convince the three doctors of the seriousness of the situation, and Youji quickly freed them.

"I remember him," one of the men gasped, bending to examine Nagi briefly. "He forced me to give him the anti-psychic drug we were working on!"

"So that's why they've been wanting us to make so much of the antidote," one of the others murmured, wide-eyed. "But we don't have the proper chemicals here to make it!"

"Then..." Nagi gasped, panting for air. "I suggest you run..."

"No!" Omi struggled out of Ran's supporting grasp and stumbled over to kneel beside his lover, drawing the younger boy into his arms. "I won't leave you," He whispered, low enough that no one but Nagi and I could hear it. "I won't let you die alone, Itoushi."

"The antidote is only temporary anyway," I said desperately to the scientist on my other side. "Isn't there anything you can do to fix him permanently?"

He shook his head, but before he could speak and crush all our hopes, one of the others suddenly said, "What if we gave him the enhancement drug?"

The first man - apparently the head of the team - blinked. "The enhancement drug?" he parroted, surprised by the notion.

"You mean the stuff you were going to give Omi?" I asked, confused as to how that would help. But the head doctor was nodding, a slow smile spreading across his rugged features.

"Yes. Yes, that might work. We've nothing to lose, at any rate. Quickly, get him up on the table. Fetch more of the enhancer. Quickly now!"

Ran and I lifted the shivering form of Nagi up onto the table, Omi trailing us clutching his hand. Nagi's eyes were clenched shut as he fought against the pain, his hand nearly crushing Omi's in its grip. Omi didn't protest, soothing back the sweaty bangs from Nagi's forehead with his free hand.

Swiftly the IV was set up once more, this time the needle sliding into Nagi's arm. Long moments passed as we hovered around the tense form nervously, the three scientists checking and rechecking the readings on what few monitors were left.

Slowly, slowly, the horrible stiffness leeched from Nagi's body. He opened his eyes, seeming dazed at the loss of the pain that had been with him constantly for so long.

"Omi?" he whispered, glancing up. "It doesn't hurt any more."

"It's working," one of the scientists confirmed. "Adrenaline levels are dropping, brainwaves are stabilizing. The enhancement drug is counteracting the poison in his system."

I let out a long sigh of relief, not realizing until then that I'd been holding my breath. Omi clutched Nagi against him in a tight hug, careful not to jar the IV in the fragile arm. It didn't make a lot of sense to me that one drug would somehow cancel out the other when they weren't even really related, but hey, I was no chemist. For all I knew, they actually were related.

Seeing Nagi's face as he was held by Omi, free of pain and full of hope and joy for the first time, a warm feeling filled my chest. Omi glanced at each of us in turn, eyes brimming with tears of happiness.

"Arigatou, minna-kun," he whispered, voice choked with emotion. "You'll never know how much this means to me. To us."

I rested a hand on his shoulder, smiling down at him. "Hey. What are friends for?"


	8. Chapter 8

I stood on the sidelines, waving my hat and cheering like a madman as the referee blew the whistle to end the game, leaving St. Agnus ahead by four goals. The regional finals were over, and my team had taken the gold. I hadn't felt so proud since the day I'd found out I'd been drafted for J-League.

The whole team poured onto the field, laughing and congratulating one another and pounding each other on the backs. Somebody started spraying the contents of a water bottle over the crowd, and then everyone was involved in the water fight.

By the time I managed to squeeze out of the crush again, I was soaked and breathless, ecstatic that my team had done so well. Hauling my coach's jersey over my head, I grabbed one of the towels on the bench and started rubbing my hair.

"Ken-kun!" A familiar high-pitched voice came from the direction of the stands. "Ken-kun, over here!"

I scanned the crowd and quickly spotted Omi waving at me, Nagi standing at his side. Grinning widely, I motioned for them to come down and quickly finished drying off.

"Omittchi!" I exclaimed in pleasure, catching him up in a tight hug. He returned the embrace, laughing and murmuring congratulations for our win.

"We came to watch the game, as soon as we heard your team was in the finals," Omi answered my unasked question. It had been a month since the battle in the Esstet labs, and he was looking much better than he had then - put on some weight again, and he'd regained that permanent happy flush I remembered so well. Nagi was looking much healthier as well, and I said as much to both of them.

"Being normal college students is a relief for both of us," Nagi answered me, smiling shyly. "And it's thanks to you and the others that we can live ordinary lives again. We'll never be able to thank you enough."

"Aww..." I blushed and rubbed the back of my head in embarrassment. "You don't have to thank us. You'd have done the same for us."

"The others couldn't make it to the game, but they're meeting us in two hours for dinner," Omi informed me. "Do you want to come?"

"Of course!" I grinned back at him. "Wouldn't miss it for the world. I'll just go change, and see the team off. Mata ne!"

Waving, I jogged off across the field towards the locker room, where the players had already disappeared. Looking back at them over my shoulder, I reflected that normal life was doing wonders for all of us. And this time, we'd all determined not to let ourselves slip out of touch. Nagi's powers were firmly back under his control, and though Esstet was still operational, it just wasn't our problem anymore. Kritiker had a new unit for that sort of thing now, and Manx had released us all with her blessings, promising to keep in touch as well.

It might not have been the life I'd had planned out so many years ago, I reflected as I rode my bike to the restaurant Omi'd named, but it was a good life. I had learned things I'd never expected to know about the way humanity worked, good and bad. I knew that I'd done something to help rid the world of some of its darkness. And most of all, I'd made friends that were closer than family, who I knew would always be there if I needed them.

Parking the bike and entering the restaurant, I saw all my friends waiting for me. Ran and his sister Aya, Youji and his fiancée, who was a surprisingly sweet but strong-willed woman, Omi and Nagi, even Manx. Grinning from ear to ear, I moved to join them, knowing in my heart that no one had ever had it any better than this.


End file.
